Young people who escape North Korea face a second struggle when they arrive in the South: how to cope in an alien education system
Schools like Haankkum help them adjust to a new way of life
A s a star student at Haankkum school, about an hour’s drive north of Seoul, Kang will have fond memories when she graduates in the summer.
The 21-year-old has been at Haankkum just two years, but has a lifetime’s worth of memories. Of trips to New Zealand, America, India and Nepal, of friends made, projects undertaken and goals achieved.
Among the clearest of her memories will be the time, shortly after her arrival, when she took the lead role in a musical, Frozen River, performed at Seoul’s famous Kookmin university.
“I used to be a very shy person who couldn’t go in front of people, so I didn’t plan on taking the lead role,” says Kang. “But, I ultimately thought I should overcome this challenge.”
It wasn’t just the crowd making her nervous – but that the musical was based on her life. It told the story of how her father was executed for opposing the North Korean regime and how she escaped to China over the frozen Tumen river after being branded the daughter of a traitor.
It’s a story that will have been familiar to her friends at Haankkum; the school is among a handful of South Korean educational institutions that cater solely to defectors from the North.
There are an estimated 30,000 defectors from North Korea living in the South, and about 2,800 of them are in the education system.
About 90 per cent are enrolled in public schools; the other 10 per cent attend alternative schools, like Haankkum, which specialise in catering to pupils who might otherwise struggle to adjust to life in a public institution.
“I was just 15 years old when I escaped,” recalls Kang. “I had dropped out of middle school in North Korea and I couldn’t receive a normal education in China,” she explains. “And what I did learn in North Korea was mostly about the life of our leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il [the grandfather and father of Kim Jong-un]. We didn’t learn any English.”
This educational gap is a problem for most defectors, and is one of the main attractions for students who choose Haankkum, which does not have an age limit or an entrance test.
Another female student, Byun, found Haankkum when other schools said they would be unsuited to her situation. The 27-year-old had forgotten how to speak Korean and by the time she arrived in Seoul, had given birth to two children. Byun’s grandfather was a South Korean soldier captured by the North during the Korean war.
When he was executed, Byun – then seven – and her mother fled to China. But the pair were separated when Chinese police discovered her mother and sent her back to North Korea, where she spent the next 10 years in a concentration camp.
The pair have since reunited in the South.
“I intend to live proudly in the home of my father, and I want my daughter to do the same,” says Byun’s mother, who is 47 and works in a nursing home in Seoul.
